Under federal law, the employer may offer meal or rest breaks. Rest periods are paid and last between 5 and 20 minutes.5 Meal hours are unpaid and last 30 minutes or more.6 However, federal law does not require employers to grant either type of break. However, state law may require them to do so. Even though there is no legal obligation to provide rest or meal breaks, many employers still do. During a road trip through Europe, I was often confronted with ugly weather until the finish while planning on Google Maps. A non-exempt worker is a person who is entitled to minimum wage and overtime pay. There are only a limited number of exceptions to this legal protection. While many employees fall into one of these exceptions, not all do. Full-time and part-time workers who have joined unions may have a collective agreement limiting the number of hours they can work in a single workday. It can also determine how overtime is calculated and evaluate overtime. You can drive 700 miles in a day by maintaining an average driving speed of 50 miles per hour for 14 hours. With frequent breaks of 3 hours, this translates into a total travel time of 17 hours. It is highly recommended to have a second driver to avoid driver fatigue.
Many employers pay for travel time separately, often at a lower rate of pay than normal working hours. It`s not illegal as long as your employer notifies you in advance of the fare difference and you receive at least minimum wage for driving, but all hours worked – including compensable travel time – must be taken into account in determining whether an employee is entitled to overtime pay equal to one and a half times the employee`s regular wage rate. If a different rate of pay is used, there is a special calculation that an employer must use to mix the different rates of pay to ensure that they are paying the right amount of overtime. When planning a road trip, I have to think about how far I want to travel on a given day. This is where traffic takes the longest. One way to mitigate this is to arrange accommodation outside of the city centre, read on to find out how many hours it is safe to drive in a day and how often you should take breaks. In general, regular travel from your home to your place of work is not compensable, even if your home is far from work. However, important work done at home before going to work, such as calling or emailing clients, filling out work-related paperwork, and scheduling their tasks, can make travel time compensable. Many employees who are on the road during the workday do not stop for lunch and have lunch along the way.
It is illegal for your employer to require you to take a lunch break or automatically deduct lunch time from your salary if you eat while you are on compensable driving time and do not take a lunch break. The distance you can safely travel in a day is a very difficult number to determine, as there are many different factors to consider. (ii) interruption of driving time. Except for drivers eligible for one of the short-haul exemptions set out in section 395.1(e)(1) or (2), driving is not permitted if more than 8 hours of driving time have elapsed without at least a continuous 30-minute interruption of driving status. A continuous interruption of 30 minutes in driving status may be compensated either by off-duty, sleeper or off-duty driving time, or by a combination of rest time, berth and off-duty driving time. In my experience, you can travel more distances with additional drivers, but you need to make sure you follow the rules above. An example of an industry that regulates one-day hours of work is the trucking industry. Truckers can only drive up to 11 hours in any 14-hour period. After the 14-hour window, truckers must take 10 hours off.1 Drivers using a sleeping area must spend at least 8 hours in the sleeping area and may divide the sleeping time into two periods, provided neither is less than 2 hours. All sleeping place pairings MUST last at least 10 hours.
It is safe to drive for up to 9 hours a day. This is based on a combination of guidance from the EU Driving Safety Regulation and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. If you navigate through traffic rules regarding compensation, you may encounter problems with driving time in the workplace. We help our employees ensure they are paid for their compensable hours of work. If you have any questions about your travel time that is included in your hours worked, please contact us at (800) 616-4000 or [email protected]. At Shavitz Law Group, we have helped thousands of workers defend their right to fair compensation. Drivers can share their mandatory 10-hour absence, provided that one rest period (whether inside or outside the sleeping place) lasts at least 2 hours and the other includes at least 7 consecutive hours spent in the bunk. All sleeping place pairings MUST last at least 10 hours. When used together, neither period counts towards the maximum 14-hour driving window. You can drive 11 hours a day, as long as you take enough breaks and watch for signs of driver fatigue.